


ofrenda (burn)

by regionalsky



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Day of the Dead, Death, Demon, Heaven, Hell, Ofrenda, Other, angel - Freeform, dia de los muertos, skeleton
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 21:05:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17968028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regionalsky/pseuds/regionalsky
Summary: a car crash, a photograph, and endless white hallways.





	ofrenda (burn)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this back in november for another account. here is an edited version.

The last picture, dark and blurry, sat crammed in between two pages of his favorite book. It was from an old film project his friend had done. The negatives were long gone, but one grainy picture remained. It had been there for almost a hundred years, long forgotten, but well protected within the lines of verse.

Tyler died on the first day of October.  
When it happened, it much less of a big deal than he thought it would be. He was seventeen, hit by a car his best friend Jackson had been driving. It was a freak accident- in the middle of the day, and both of them were sober. It was one of those awful things that no one expected and shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't have. He wasn't doing anything wrong. They sang for him, prayed and screamed and cried, calling out to his soul to return to the world. 

Tyler was still dead. His neck had snapped and he was gone instantly, with only a sharp burst of fear.  
It wasn’t a loss of life, persay- it was more of a transition. On to the next world, the new beyond.

the next world had started with a line. Hundreds of people waited in front of a single window. Surrounded by endless grey walls, Tyler had slowly made his way to the back. Some people hugged their knees and sobbed. Some muttered and stared off into space. One woman had run up and down the line, frantically asking questions. “Where am I?” She’d shrieked, eyes wild with fear. “What happened?”  
She had been met with shrugs and vacant stares. She was not the first, nor the last.  
The line took ages. There was no way of telling time- it could’ve been a year or an hour. But when Tyler had finally reached the window, he’d asked the question many screaming and terrified people had asked.  
“Where am I?” He said to the woman behind the window, who had been busy typing something into archaic computer system.  
“You’re dead, honey.” She murmured, not looking up. “Tyler Joseph?”  
He’d nodded, not sure what else to do.  
“Hand,” she’d instructed, holding out her own. Once he’d placed it in hers, she turned it over, palm facing down, and stamped the back.  
It was a triangle, thick and black. Tyler’d looked back up to ask where he was, or where to go, or what was next, but the window was gone. So was the line when he turned around.  
Instead, he was in a small room. White walls and a white bed stared back at him. A bookshelf sat in the corner, empty and sullen. Next to it was a small, black desk with a lamp.  
“Hello?” He’d asked to the walls. No one answered.

He’d found out later- hours later- that the door was unlocked. Outside, there was a single potted plant next to his door. He touched the leaves, breathing in the stale air. They were plastic. Fluorescents reflected off of white walls as he walked down the hallway, searching for another soul.

There was a common room about fifty doors and three turns down from him. When he went out the hallway on the other side, there was an identical hundred doors and common room. He sat down in a puffy chair, mind overwhelmed. Emotion had left his body. He wanted to feel anything- scared, excited, nervous, lost, angry- but all he felt was empty. As empty as the rooms around him.  
As time passed, he saw other faces. None he’d recognized. Initially, he’d hoped he would reunite with lost family members and friends, but it was quickly apparent that that would never happen. He would never find them.  
He could talk, but no one was interested. Once you talked about your life, there was nothing really left to speak about but the uncertainty that plagued every soul in the place. Where were they? What was next? Was this hell?  
It wasn’t really hell as much as it was boredom. The bookshelf had every book you could ever want, and endless paper appeared on the desk. He tried to keep himself entertained, but the endless walls and fluorescents shot daggers into his creativity. It turned out the bed wasn’t for sleeping- it was so he could lay down and stare at the perfectly white ceiling.  
He did a lot of that. There was no food to eat, no shit to shit. He probably could have had sex, but finding other people was the last thing he wanted to do. He just sat and stared, not knowing how or when or if time passed.

After re-reading a random book for the third time, Tyler decided to try to kill himself. He wasn’t sure if it was possible, because he was as already dead, but he could definitely try.  
He’d begun to try to fashion a length of paper into a noose when fresh air caught his nose. It was bright, warm, and it danced into his brain, lighting up parts that hadn’t been touched since he’d died.  
It was coming from under the door. Slowly, trying not to scare the hope away, he crept towards the door. The air was intoxicating.  
Emotions sprung to his chest for the first time since he’d gotten in line. Dry pine smoke and bird cries flew in on the air, bringing promises of a forest.  
Was he hallucinating? Was it a dream? Had he finally killed himself?  
He touched the handle, fingers shaking. It was electrifying, the feelings that filled him. He felt alive again.

He opened the door to a forest, lit by softly flickering candles. Sobs echoed through the needles, carrying to his ears. His saw his friends, hugging one another, and his mom sobbing into the shoulder of his father. Sitting on a table was a picture of him, smiling on top of a mountain.  
Tyler had just walked into the anniversary of his death.

Being back in the real world filled him to the brim with long- lost emotions. Life danced within his eyes, as transparent as he was. He found out quickly that he couldn’t communicate or interact with anything- he could only watch. And when he stared at his hands, he could see the fire-lit carpet of pine needles beneath him. He ached to speak to his mother, his friends, but even complete silence was better than the room. Anything was better than the room, the four walls and the plastic plant guarding his door. Anything.

The worst thing in the world, even worse than the room, was having to return to it. On Halloween, the last day of the month, he was running around after his cousins, laughing as they shoved handful after handful of candy down their throats. Earth had become heaven, and the room had become a distant, angry spark.  
But on Halloween, the room became larger in his mind. Brighter. It took over, fighting off the real world and forcing Tyler back to his prison. He felt the ground leave his feet as he was thrust back into the four walls, the life leaving his chest as quickly as it had come.

It felt like being socked in the stomach with the force of an entire lifetime. But worse, because he couldn’t cry about it. He couldn’t cry about anything. Everything- the joy, sadness, nostalgia, content- left his body in a snap. He was left in the room again, with the hallway beyond the door. He couldn’t even feel upset. He could just sit on the bed and wait.  
He waited for another year, only living for the time that the forest would sneak in under his door. Sometimes, he feared it would never come back, but there was nothing he could do. So he just waited. Re reading books, walking the endless halls. There was something to look forwards to. He didn’t want to kill himself. He wanted to go back.

He continued going back for a decade, and then another. Slowly, morning of his death became smaller and less widespread as his parents died. His picture still existed in old family photos and friends’ diaries, but memory of him slowly dropped existence. His siblings died with his friends, his nieces and nephews. Every year he went back it seemed another friend was gone.  
Pictures kept getting lost or destroyed- thrown away by accident, or torn in broken picture frames. Slowly, his and his friends’ great descendants died and gave way to his best friend’s great great nephew, Andrew, who had the last remaining picture of him.

It had been almost a hundred years since Tyler had tried speaking with anyone connected to him. He’d never been able to find any of them within the long halls of the Place- but he almost never left his room, anyways. The only time he stepped outside the door anymore was when he went back to earth, when he felt the grass beneath his feet and the sun in his hair.  
Tyler knew, from seeing his hallmates disappear, that when no pictures of him existed he’d never be allowed to go back to the real world. He’d also leave the Place, but no one knew what was in the Beyond.

Tyler, when he could feel emotions, was terrified. The last picture of him sat in an ancient book of poetry, on a bookshelf in the attic of Andrew’s house. Jackson, his best friend, had kept the picture of Tyler when he died, cried with it even when Tyler had been gone fifty years. He’d kept the book with his treasures, a ratty red cover covered in dust. Almost no one had touched it since he’d died.  
Andrew looked like Jackson. Tyler found himself following Andrew around in October as much as he followed his own descendants, hoping to catch a glimpse of his old friend in the dark curly hair and patchy stubble. Andrew was as forgetful as Jackson- he’d leave his wallet on the counter, or forget the dog was outside. Tyler laughed, even though it was Jackson’s forgetfulness that had cost him his life. Watching Andrew was almost like talking to his old best friend, and his lapses in memory were endearing.

Then, one day, Andrew forgot to put out a candle when he went to bed. He’d set them up for a date, but the girl had stood him up. Tyler wanted to comfort him, but he just sat on the couch and watched. After crying and eating almost an entire tub of ice cream, he’d blown out most of them and headed up to bed.

All except one. One, hanging by the curtain, greedy flame licking at the fabric.  
Tyler stared at it. Watched as it grew, caught climbed up to the wall. There. It had to end there.  
But it didn’t. It grabbed the wall, expanding up and around the window. Tyler glanced at the fire detector. Surely, it would go off?

It was silent. Another unlikely event. Tyler was getting nervous. He tried to touch the fire, to stop it, but of course his hands went straight through. He tried fanning the smoke to the detector. He grabbed for the phone, tried to shake Andrew awake. Nothing was working. Flames greedily ate up the living room and expanded to the upstairs, finally waking up Andrew.

Red hot pain suddenly lanced through his back, ripping a scream out of his mouth. He bucked as the pain forced its way into his mouth. His entire body felt like it was on fire, lines tracing and crossing over his skin. Tyler arched his back, where the pain was concentrated, heat searing his skin. He shrieked as if it would never end, because it felt like it never would. It only got worse. His forehead erupted with slicing agony. Collapsing to the ground, he held his head, wishing for death. But he was already dead? Dead twice? He was gone. Wishing it was over. Wishing he didn’t exist.

As quickly as it had come, the pain left. He laid on the ground, whimpering as his muscles unconstricted. Flinching at every sound, he waited for the agony to come back.  
Minutes dripped by. It didn’t come back. He was sore, his body didn’t feel like his own. But he wasn’t being hurt.  
Slowly, he stood. When he looked down at his hands, the black triangles had multiplied, spreading over his skin. His veins were black and pronounced over thick, corded muscle.

His tongue prodded the long teeth that stuck over his lips. Fangs. Tyler had fangs. His fingers shook, fear pounding around his mind.  
He tried to run his hands through his hair, but something stopped him. Big, bony horns curled out of his forehead. They were solid and sharp at the end, and he cut his finger as he ran it over.  
A shard of glass on the floor caught his eye. He glanced at it slowly, scared at what he would see. Dipping around the side of his back were wings, heavy and black. He reached back to feel them, wincing at the pain that started through his body. Blood dropped to the floor from his cut finger.

By the door rested an iron pitchfork, tips covered in blood. He shuddered as he felt his wings, now hyperaware, brush against the ground.  
“Mr. Joseph?” A voice called as the door creaked open.  
Another demon, freakish and unworldly, stepped through the door. He was tall, powerful, with long black horns and a mane of thick, flowing hair. A pencil rested behind his ear, and he held a staff in his left hand. Leaning against the stone wall, he looked Tyler up and down.  
“Where am I?” tyler asked, knowing full well what the answer was.  
“Well, Mr. Joseph,” the demon laughed, tapping a pencil against his teeth. “You’ve got a triangle on your hand. If you have a circle, you get to go up there,” he pointed to the ceiling, “and live in eternal peace.” He laughed, lip curling into a mocking snarl. “Here, though, we are not brown nosers. We do not believe in peace. We wage war where we see fit, defend ourselves and those we love. We are honest about what we want. We have dignity, courage, and pride. “ the demon smiled, tossing his pitchfork to Tyler. It glinted in the low life. “Welcome to hell.”  



End file.
